Saturday 31 August 2013

Thomas Seeks Belief - edit 2



Thomas lifts his hairshirt, touches, gently,
the lesion beneath. As he stands beside the diligent bed,
hidden in the tall, thin shadows
cast by a crooked lampshade, he recalls
how his chest was once wound free.

That was when he was young, blithe,
inhabited the Tao moment,
uncluttered, free of the need for belief, the future –
a thread yet
to be woven - unhindered, unkept.

Then came the children.

Now his heart is constantly exposed, a deep gash
unable to heal - a place for all manner of things
to visit, to perch
on fleshy lips or enter and touch
the heart within.

Thomas lies in bed, bare-chested, misses
the kiss at night when his naked wife
would lie by his side. Her wound and his
shared solace as they
wondered what the children were up to.

His wife buried, children grown
into their own spasms
to navigate. In the dark, Thomas slips
his hand into the gap and touches, gently,
his own beating centre.

He stares, opened-eyed, up at the unseen
ceiling, seeks assurance, a belief
that all would be well
with his children and theirs
long after his time has been and gone.

The magpie’s canvas



Before the curtains are drawn
and light can enter the mind -
the day fresh and uneaten;

before the lover’s hand
can alight upon the shoulder’s blade
and stir sleep into action,

the feathered artist
warbles aural paint across the world.
Ears fill with the gravity
of a planet returned, a promise fulfilled.

The eucalypt are greened and greyed,
the sun given its yellow haze;
the sky, with each trill and cadence,
returned from night into blue.

Head upon pillowed dreams,
I hear the artist’s work;
know the world
is made whole in the dawn.

Friday 30 August 2013

Thomas Seeks Belief - edit 1



Thomas lifts his hairshirt and
touches, gently,
the wound beneath, recalls - as
he stands in the tall, thin shadows cast
by a crooked lampshade beside the diligent bed -
how his chest was once wound free.

That was when he was young, blithe,
inhabited the Tao moment, free
of the need for belief, the future -
a thread yet to be woven, unhindered, unkept.

Then came the children.

Now his heart is constantly exposed, a wound
unable to heal - a place for all manner of things
to visit, to perch
on fleshy lips or enter and touch
the heart within.

Thomas lies in bed, bare chested, missing
that kiss at night when his naked wife
would lie by his side, her wound and his
seek solace as they
wondered what the children were up to.

His wife buried, children grown
into their own wounds to tend, their own
spasms to navigate. In the dark, Thomas slips
his hand into the gap and touches, gently,
his own beating heart.

He stares, opened-eyed, up at the unseen
ceiling, seeks assurance, a belief
that all would be well
with his children and theirs
long after his time has been and gone.

R.I.P. Seamus Heaney


Great poet, a friend of mine Michael Keaney first put me on to him in the 70's. 

North is my Favouritte collection

and I loved his collected prose work  Finders Keepers.



St Kevin and the Blackbird

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

*

And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love’s deep river,
‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.

Thursday 29 August 2013

Thomas seeks belief



Thomas lifts his hairshirt and touches, gently,
the wound beneath, recalls as he stands
in the shadowing lamplight before bed
how his chest was once wound free
but then came the children and now his heart
is forever exposed, a wound that cannot heal -
a place for all manner of things to visit, to perch
on fleshy lips or enter and touch the heart within.

Thomas lies in bed, bare chested, missing that kiss
at night when his naked wife would lie by his side,
her wound and his kissing, seeking solace as
their hearts wondered what the children were up to.

Thomas is old now, his wife buried, children grown,
having their own wounds to tend, their own spasms
to navigate. In the dark, Thomas slips his hand
into the gap and touches, gently, his own beating heart.
He stares, opened-eyed, up at the unseen ceiling,
seeks assurance, a belief that all would be well with his
children and theirs long after his time has been and gone.

Wednesday 28 August 2013

Is There A God For The Beard Worm?

Before wood became skin
I went for a swim in the ocean
but my stone for a heart
anchored me to melancholy.

I sank so deep
I befriended the beard worms,
allowed my feet to become buried
in the sand at the world’s end,
lifted my face in the darkness
while from above fell
the histories of plant and animal;
fleshy manna - the saddest sight
my wooden eyes had seen.

It was in that darkness,
with my face lifted up
and my wooden lips praying,
I first began to doubt.

Tuesday 27 August 2013

Cove At Newhaven



Between rocks the colour of dried blood -
the colour of her lips - the cove recollects.

Empty shells drag across the brown sand,
writing messages eyes will never read.

Waves gather to the cove's heart; she
embraces each prodigal laughing as he 
races into the sandy bosom then retreats 
with flooded memory of why he first fled. 

There is a time and a place for everything - even regret.

We parked the car. Slipped on our bums down the dead
grass slope to the lip of white foam water pursed
to spit us out no matter how many times as pale seals
we dived into the underworld and laughed in explosions
of surrender. We watched the drops of seawater -
speckled diamonds that hung in the watercolour blue sky
to catch the sunlight from your turned away eyes - fall;
languid fingernails of a god’s sad hand as he lays down
his trident, collects stories as seaweed to stroke between fingers
lost in a time, lost in the erosion of once powerful words.

The small cove, naked between mangrove’s hunger
and rock’s anger, a kiss of sand, a memory
of what has passed, a soft invitation to stop the journey
and immerse forever in salt water’s promise to cleanse.

Monday 26 August 2013

Thus Spoke…



There is more to this
than the way our tongue moves; the way it
approaches or retreats from teeth, or our lips
shaping themselves first as sly, sunlit maid
and then as aching mother.

The chords thrum as breath weaves a wand
and turns into sound - the voice in the dark
catches light eyes cannot see
if we but pause and listen
to the tone; never the words,
the words
are the illusion, the packaging.

In the room, or out and about,
we several lay ourselves down or move around
and breathe - imagine the world
as small as our heartbeats, as large
as our minds

and we let loose a conversation…


It travels into a space
none of us expected -

not even the finest of poets -


the way a dance becomes something so much more
than a body moving from place to place.

Sunday 25 August 2013

Odin, wishing his son was not grown:


In Asgaard, when it was young and the wolves 
had not yet begun to howl nor my eyes 
begun to dim,  we would walk, you and I, 
down by the river where it was always raining -
the water sunk deep into the weeds, and the bank 
was overrun with activity as everything tried 
to get in or out of the churning water -  I remember 
that your little footsteps squelched as we trod.

My hand clutched yours and we peered into the murky water, 
your eyes constantly drawn by the lure of frogs 
or the shimmer of salmon. In those days you paused often 
and let my words, like that river, wash against you, filling you, 
I hope, with some of the wisdom I had found in my travels.

When you were three you hid a duck under a bucket
that day you clomped down the stairs, a brush that dripped 
paint like laughter, and the time you sat on the window ledge 
and leaned too hard against the fly wire. We all laughed 
when your head popped up from amongst the pineapple sage.

I wish you’d come home, son, but not all grown-up. I’d like, 
just occasionally, that three old to visit me again so I could 
hold him close and maybe try even harder
to imprint what I know must fade.
 
As it is, standing by the river, the rainbow bridge
shows signs that it fades, and my empty hand throbs with memory -
I feel like I am a duck under a bucket, waiting.

Saturday 24 August 2013

Final Edit of the Accelerator Poem


The Adolescent Particle Accelerator

Born before the Higgs was theorized, born
before that moment when man questioned
if we had the right stuff, born
before a giant step and a flag that did not flutter...

It is adolescent dreams
that are most missed - how each day
is revealed in the pain; the swirling
forces that bind and unravel
playing out again and again in kisses
and drinks and mornings waking next
to a breast or hip of someone unknown
only hours before. It is the howling
at the night, a bottle in one hand
and the masked future, a raging trumpeter,
stirring the forces to live on despite it all.

Now contentment, a sated cat, laps
at hours and happily watches
children grow while weeks are worked
or novels written, well-worn paths trod
and gardens replanted until the evenings demand
to be snugged up to with a classical book.

Everything we are remembers who we were -
all our bosons and all the convictions they carry,
all the gatherings of leptons and quarks and their anti-cousins
remember…

Remember those wonderful mad and out of control
years when we were hadrons flying towards
the many collisions of our particle accelerator years.

Thursday 22 August 2013

AS MONTHS PASS



In limbo you swim,
bedazzled by sounds heard through the stretched full moon of stomach skin.
Your mother and I dream.
Mine are technicolour catastrophes -
so much could go wrong!
Your mother's -  a yearning for her first kiss
(and the smell of your scalp).

And you?
What do you dream
as you drift in that amniotic ocean of possibility?
Do you study prescient lessons
to help with the final preparations?

We wait,
your mother and I,
bloated with expectation
while you kick and
silently swim towards us.


Wednesday 21 August 2013

An afternoon with Visions:



 Page ready and empty -
 hands fiddle with the ribbon,
 a yarn tangled around the steadfast ‘Z/z’.

 My mind pretends a search
 but truthfully conjures visions
 of your straight spine: imagines the steel rod
 implanted within to keep it straight,
 and your perfect breasts and nipples
 seen whilst performing a Louis Nowra play
 titled ‘Visions’ in which you played my sister
 though secretly I was never your brother.

 We lay together, another sunny afternoon -
 but not fully together;
 the journey never went so far, words and time
 seem to make us stumble and splutter
 like a fire that almost catches
 yet for reasons unexplained does not.

 Now another afternoon
 I sit at this computer writing words
 that somehow have the shape, these years later,
 of the underside of your ‘b’ breast,
 the gentle curve of your ‘l’ neck,
 of your thin, soft ‘m’ lips
 and long, long gently clasping ‘w’ fingers.

 This ‘s’ is your bent leg, the knee a valley of ‘v’,
 this ‘o’ a cheek soft as a baby;
 a remembered smell sends me reeling
 into that almost moment so long ago.


 I wonder these 27 years later
 what has happened to you and that steel rod
 or your sea green eyes
 and utterly sad heart that would not let go
 to come a’ journeying with me
 on a sunny afternoon similar and almost different
 from any other and I wish, as I have some times other,
 that I might have had the courage to face your temper
 and in its tempest shout like an undaunted sailor
 the ‘I love you’ that dwelt in my heart
 that moment, on that particular afternoon.

High Class Books: Author Interview – Danny Fahey

High Class Books: Author Interview – Danny Fahey: How did you come up with the title? Catalina is a play on cat, which is where the main character began. She was the cat; Peter (another cha...

Tuesday 20 August 2013

The Third Muse and The Clayworker







The third Muse


The first Muse,
clear-sighted,
free from judgement,
a camera,
captures the model’s face
as Madonna.

The second Muse,
being human,
understands the model
as lover, child
and sister.

The third Muse
demands the clayworker
opens his mind to the place
he keeps hidden, the dark room
locked, blocked yet there,
down the long hallway,
waiting.

Inside this room the clayworker
takes his model
and abuses her
kicks her off a couch
acts a child, spits at her
throws punches, weeps
and presses upon her.

Sex has no boundaries
with this Muse
who creates crevices
in the scrotum and breast
of the clayworker.

Everyone admires the statue
never seeing the model’s bruises.

The third Muse
forces the mind to open that room -
allows the darkness
within to escape, occupy
pride of place
in the clayworker,
allows severing of an ear
alcoholic despair
and the eyes
to see God
in the movements of a tiger.

She must be embraced
with hard cock, never tamed
though claimed,
ridden like a beast
in the early hours
of morning when civilized brain
weakens
so clay
can speak to all of us.

She is destructive
and in her fire
the phoenix rises -
a masterpiece born
in the bloody battles
of the clayworker who
throws tantrums
like a Lenny Bruce on the floor
of a radio station,
chases the flesh like a Marquise
to maim and slay,
drinks or smokes or injects
to escape her clutches
and burns to kiss and fuck her
to death.



The clayworker


            I

Even as my fingers unlace
the dress that keeps your hot flesh
at bay my hands, browned in earth, itch
to mould damp clay.
While my lips kiss your abyss
my tongue tastes your coming screams
for in the morning I shall abandon
your sweet nest and as I wrest
with memory to produce an after-image
of your liquid sensuousness my ears,
lost in creation's delight, shall not hear
your voice cry out and my soul,
empty as night, shall devour our final embrace.

So one final time, as my fingers trace
our passing along your white spine,
remember this - do nothing,
nothing, but forget me!

Do nothing but forget me!
Like the ocean's spray,
let me envelop you, let me caress,
excite and elicit
the secret responses hidden
from common view.

I need nothing. I grip nothing.
Everything slips through my fingers.

Do nothing, nothing, but forget me,
for though my hands work miracles
the promises I whisper in my need
are as binding as daisy chains
while your hindsight reproaches
wreck havoc upon my innocence.

I seek nothing - the discipline is to listen.
The clay sings - the dream is revealed.


            II


Everything passes through me!

I am nothing.
I take everything.
I slip into ancient warmth
to discover your secrets.
I see into your pain, make it mine.
I feel your heat beat, match it, change it,
lead it down sodden paths once hidden from all.

There is no safety, no logical progression,
no calm expression, there is only this,
this tempestuous unearthing,
this explosion of fragments and hidden meanings,
this collision of myths and insights
as muscles and tendons
lose conscious direction, strip back the layers
to reveal visions –
the melting pot is stirred to action.


                        III

Each tired movement struggles against
the growing current
as thick reeds catch hold, threaten
to drag me under - only the clay brings relief!
Only the clay’s touch succours me!

Thoughts unbound fly in the face of protection -
a hard, wet slap to force clay into shape.
Thoughts fill my hands, fingers stab the clay,
become sharp knives to slice the morals
off stiff upper lips and hypocritical redemptions.

I am not redeemable!
I float, lost and passionately angry, in the space
between acts inconceivable. I caress,
I force, I manipulate and the clay breathes,
exists in shimmering propinquity to that which is!

Sometimes my ecstasy dominates, a storm,
a raging wind rending roots and leaves impenetrable
as I struggle to find an escape from the fire
that burns deep inside my chest - then beware! Beware!

For though my flesh may seek your embrace
my thoughts lie elsewhere and my hands,
as they dip into your lavic heat,
already ache for the clay's cool touch.

I need nothing.
I grip nothing.
I take everything.

While my words seduce
my eyes appraise;
I take what lies hidden
and follow the inspiration.



                                    IV

Sometimes I long for you.
Sometimes I even love you
but darkly, secretly, sometimes
I wish badly for you
and my fingers wriggle like snakes
spitting venom in The Gorgon's hair,
seeking a return to the clay’s lair.

I wish you begone!
Begone from this time and place!

I wish more, less, difference!
But only sometimes...

Sometimes I gentle flesh,
I caress and softly seek the recesses of delight.
Sometimes I erupt
to rend a vision physically unto existence.

Come my sweetling,
my sparrow,
my sacrifice,
come seek my arms, my loins,
my embrace.

Discover that though the flesh
may sate
and separate,
the passion that compels us
can invest us with a truth
so vast everyone is touched.

Sonnet composed in the stomach


Inside the whale’s stomach I wait
to be set free by Fortune’s breath.
I listen to the waves; futile fists
that beat against the Leviathan.
The candle I light at the moment
I deem to call midnight shrinks hourly.
Scattered bones of eaten fish remind me
of a bare tree carved into a son.


After fourteen days bright Pinocchio
arrives in a wooden boat, swallowed
whole by the Leviathan - it is
more welcome than a joyous Christmas,
his wooden face had found a smile
no hand of mine ever had the grace to carve.

Monday 19 August 2013

An Artist paints his Lover. Edit 1

Saturday morning in The Punter’s Club -
strips of amber morning light cut past the old blinds
that have seen a thousand drunks urgently knock
at the doors, impatient with the opening hours. Tony enjoys
a quiet beer in the swirling smoke, pungent hops atmosphere.
His sad, moist-grey, clairvoyant eyes watch me leave.

I cross Brunswick Street, coolness as thick as the fumes
coughed from cars so old students wear them like badges
on tattered old jackets. Towards me, Veronica storms
the road - her face a cocked pistol, her lips pursed, words
poised to be fired – eyes focused with intent upon the Pub I had left.

I pay the five dollars, enter an exhibition; wander past
paintings of tumbling buildings and their broken windows
staring blindly into the white light of the exhibition,
hidden paddocks littered with oily puddles that seep
rainbows. Beside the pools, syringes, silvery and still,
emit air bubbles – fish gasping for breath.

I reach Tony’s painting, a galley ship, sails stretched
taut in a gale wind, the sea-washed prow crashes
a wave higher than man’s folly. Everywhere the vicious
deep green sea wild, wet, Mistress of the ship’s fate.

The picture’s violence leaps out, punches me
where lunch would be if poet’s had any money. Beneath,
written in black - the painting’s title ‘Veronica’. I remembered
her face crossing the road and Tony’s aura of sadness as he sat
on a barstool sipping beer, nodding farewell as I made my leave,
his cigarette turning to ash in his quiet, unsteady hand.

The Adolescent Particle Accelerator - edit 4


Born before the Higgs was theorized, born
before that moment when man questioned
if we had the right stuff, born
before a giant step and a flag that did not flutter...

It is adolescent dreams
that are missed most of all - how each day
is revealed in the pain; the swirling -
the forces that bind and unravel
playing out again and again in kisses
and drinks and mornings waking next
to a breast or hip of someone unknown
only hours before. It is the howling
at the night, a bottle in one hand
and the masked future, a raging trumpeter,
stirring the forces to live on despite it all.

Now contentment, a sated cat, laps
at hours and happily watches
children grow while weeks are worked
or novels written, well-worn paths trod
and gardens replanted until the evenings demand
to be snugged up to with a classical book.

Everything we are remembers who we were -
all our bosons and all the convictions they carry,
all the gatherings of leptons and quarks and their anti-cousins
remember…

Remember those wonderful mad and out of control
years when we were hadrons flying towards
the many collisions of our particle accelerator years.

Sunday 18 August 2013

An Artist paints his Lover

Saturday morning in The Punter’s Club -
strips of amber morning light cut past the old blinds
that have seen a thousand drunks urgently knock
at the doors, impatient with the opening hours. Tony enjoys
a quiet beer in the swirling smoke, pungent hops atmosphere.
His sad, moist-grey, clairvoyant eyes watch me leave.

I cross Brunswick Street, coolness as thick as the fumes
coughed from cars so old students wear them like badges
on tattered old jackets. Towards me, Veronica storms
the road - her face a cocked pistol, her lips gun-barrel
straight – eyes focused with intent upon the Pub I had left.

I pay the five dollars, enter an exhibition; wander past
paintings of tumbling buildings and their broken windows
staring blindly into the white light of the exhibition,
hidden paddocks littered with oily puddles that seep
rainbows. Beside the pools, syringes, silvery and still,
emit air bubbles – fish gasping for breath.

I reach Tony’s painting, a galley ship, sails stretched
taut in a gale wind, the sea-washed prow crashes
a wave higher than man’s folly. Everywhere the vicious
deep green sea wild, wet, Mistress of the ship’s fate.

The picture’s violence leaps out, punches me
where lunch would be if poet’s had any money. Beneath,
written in black - the painting’s title ‘Veronica’. I remembered
her face crossing the road and Tony’s aura of sadness as he sat
on a barstool sipping beer, nodding farewell as I made my leave,
his cigarette turning to ash in his quiet, unsteady hand.

Friday 16 August 2013

the lure


The woman wipes
floury hands upon the thin floral
apron tied around a waist
still small enough
to turn an eye, the left hand
hooked like a bird’s claw, brushes
coiled red hair
away from eyes
faded as the sun hanging out to dry
above another day.

The man holds
the chook between fingers
hard as a dog's jaw; places
its stupid head
upon the wooden block
rusted deep with the fragility of life.
A sudden thunk, a headless gallop
and the head, startled
as a cheek slapped out of the blue,
is tossed aside for the dog.

The child sits
on a concrete step
so hard his bum whines, listens
to the kneading
of dough, the sound of his mother’s shoes
skating across the linoleum, watches
the half-moon axe
descend – he wants to move
inside and across to the man; is forever
trapped between the two.


We are vessels of time



A single word -
slide the tongue across lips, moisten
the twin sisters coated with the accumulated dust
of a day’s travel, pronounce ‘Tripoli.’

Feel vocal chords thrum over sounds
the mind makes in an absence of consciousness.

The plucked bass causes lips to vibrate,
the tingle, an anchor moving up through water,
bursting free as the sound moves down the ear canal
and into the open sea of memory.

The experience of associated consonants
and vowels trip the senses, conjures images
of a time displaced in the shifting sands -
the sounds of the word, the timelines
that tinkle, an Indian girl dances, head askew, hands
at the end of a series of angles, fingers clap symbols
in the synaptic paths
paved first in sandaled feet, dreamt of in caves,
before spears became bombs and fire, the flames
to sear the flesh off differences.

We all speak in tongues.

The single word, loaded with past periods, prods us
on a journey to a place
that exists in our minds, a contemplation
of a time displaced in particles called children
who experience the world
upon the humped-back voice of preceding epochs.

Words make sailors of us all; we travel
upon sound-waves back to moments
where histories rise up as pyramids, where
fading events, like the rusted, scattered, bloodstained
remains of battles, first entered language.

The starting point’s faint echo
conjures up visions of sand and animals
eyes of now have never seen. We feel the imprint of feet
upon a landscape lost through choices
or the avalanche of planetary forces.

Once uttered, words defy
a short trip between two points. Dictionaries
hold only a fraction, cannot define
wrinkles casting us back to places we have only seen
with the clarity of the mind’s eye. Language
moves outside the flimsy barriers of the here and now -
we are the flesh and bone singers of history.

Words are not a journal of the distance
lost, they are a ripple of the effect
the shifting landscape has had upon us.

The span stretches back to the unknown, the landscape
seen, is fragile as thought. If the light shone
is too harsh, if truth
is too brightly sought, the listeners
do not leave their lounge room, minds do not fall
into the tunnel of imagined connections.

Displacement is lost in facts, but a whispered moan,
a faint, modulated call, a certain pitch,
becomes a vessel upon the ocean - water
flashes faint on distant waves - draws
the ear, draws the mind, makes the body thrum,
brings images closer to the stroking oars -
flesh stretched tight over the hollow that is history;
a father’s sad, lost eyes, the sound
of time’s echo, a mother’s quiet voice
calling, ‘Come, come, come back to me now.’